


feel your breath on my lips, your hands in my hair (i want it to last forever)

by mistionii



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Airplane Flights, Angst, Canon Universe, Complicated Relationships, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Meetups, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Roadtrip, Unrequited Love, covid doesn't exist here, karl is a flustered idiot, not beta read we die like george in manhunt, not very slow burn, rated teen for swearing and slight body image issues, sapnap is one flirty mf, who's very insecure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28504878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistionii/pseuds/mistionii
Summary: “Karl.” Soft, ticklish. He swallows, faltering, trying to speak without sounding pathetic.“Sap.” He manages back, and the slight quirk of Sap’s red lips tells him that it’s enough.orKarl goes through the motions of crushing on a fellow streamer. He dreams. He discovers that he's willing to risk a lot.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs, Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 68
Kudos: 532





	1. Dreams

He’s lying on his back. That’s adamantly clear, his back stiff against the ground. He groans softly, making to get up, and crackling echoes quietly under the uncertain prop of a hand flat against the ground. There’s leaves stuck under his hands and all around the forest area. 

_Where am I?_ His head throbs, pulse ebbing softly, a steady tempo against his temple. He struggles to his feet, feet frazzled and scrambling. Heat pushes incessantly at his head, persistent, irritatingly. 

Through the confused headspace of his, Karl thinks he’s in the middle of nowhere. 

He pushes fingers through his hair absently. It’s a while before he grasps on his bearings. 

He takes irregular strides around the forest, stumbling around thick trunks, digging his fingertips harshly into bark when the world spins and drops around him. It’s disorientating, leaves Karl blinking slowly and steadily against the strain. 

Leaves crackle under someone’s foot and he whips his head quickly, but catches no one. 

It’s a bit before he struggles his way to the base of a sturdy tree. Slides down the side of the tree, presses his face into his palms. 

“Hey, Jacobs.” Hot chocolate tells him, familiar, inviting, welcoming. Someone swings their feet and shifts on the branch above him, and he tilts his head up.

Dark hair falls in waves over steel grey irises, combat boots swinging gently. His breath catches just the slightest. The man just shifts his head just a bit, the smallest motion, and dark strands cast themselves over the white material of a bandana. Light that streams through the small gaps from overlapping leaves snatch the stray strands of black, twirls and turns them into the lightest browns. His irises glow softly under the spilling sunlight, and he’s completely focused on Karl. He’s simply there, gaze steady, warm, enveloping, absolutely breathtaking in every aspect, pretty grey fanned under long eyelashes. He nearly shuts his eyes in submission to the other’s godly aura, if he wasn’t this entranced and breathless by the man’s very presence.

“Karl.” Soft, ticklish. He swallows, faltering, trying to speak without sounding pathetic. 

“Sap.” He manages back, and the slight quirk of Sap’s red lips tells him that it’s enough. 

Karl props the back part of the crown of his head against bark. Sapnap keeps his level gaze, that gaze, that one gaze that pulls him apart and fans the flames of his throbbing temple as the heat grows and licks through his head, zips down the nape of his neck and further down. 

“Isn’t it peaceful here, Jacobs?” Sap’s voice is quieter than he’s ever heard it (because Sapnap and soft just didn’t match in the slightest), and it lulls him into a sleepy peace, like a quiet touch to his temple. 

“Y-yeah. Yeah.” 

Sap does that small laugh that stops his heart, the quick exhale of air out through vocal cords. It’s silent for a bit when they don’t say anything into the soft silence of the forest; faint trickling of water somewhere, the quietest peeps from birds hidden safely in their twig nests. Something scuttles quickly beside him, fur ticklish against his skin, but it doesn’t break his eye contact with Sapnap, who’s resting his palms behind him on the branch, chin tilted and gaze bright. 

He’s entranced, caught in the sticky strands of Sapnap’s very presence, enraptured helplessly in the gaze of someone akin to a deity, and he can’t help but fall further. 

Sap shifts above him, and Karl’s so fixated on his teasing steel grey gaze that he misses the flash of a playful grin on Sap’s laughter-brushed lips. 

“Enjoy looking at me, Jacobs?” Sap asks easily, suggestive as always, the long ends of his bandana casting themselves along with the gentle breeze that’s just stirred up. 

Karl blinks heavily at him, shrugging slightly. “Maybe I _do_.” 

Sap’s response is to laugh, and Karl does nothing but stare. 

“I want you to look at me like that. Like, always.” The younger says, pulling one booted foot over the branch. 

The heat spreads and spreads and ravages all across his chest, under his ribcage, toying with his waist, and he’s burning, burning powerlessly, and it paints vivid red over rounded cheeks, and he shuts his eyes to a gorgeous, beautiful man too much for his small heart. 

“You can’t just say that-" he shudders quietly, pushing his right thumb harshly into the crook of his left elbow, wrapping himself in his arms. 

“Say what?” Sapnap is bold, so very bold, and there’s just heat and warmth and scorching fires in his voice and his blue-grey eyes, more grey than blue, no matter how sharply he proclaims. There’s a soft thud, and he startles into eyes a storm. 

“What can’t I _say_ , Karl Jacobs?”

He’s inches away. Karl thinks he can feel Sap’s soft breaths on his lips, his eyelashes on his own cheeks. His foot tingles with the warmth that spreads south, spreads and rages through his body, and he’s crying out loud with the force of the heat, digging fingers into his skin. 

“What do you want, Karl?” It’s not aggressive, the opposite really. Sap gazes down at him, a pretty pretty face sheltered with dark flyaways and bangs that frame his eyes, his lips. He stutters, won’t speak, _can’t_ , because Sapnap’s left him breathless, stole his heart like the fucking menace he is to his heart. 

“What do you really _want?”_ A hand circling his wrist softly. 

He can’t react, nerves and all feeling too fried from the fire that roars from his head to his toes when Sapnap presses his lips chastely on the bridge of his nose.

He wakes up, gasping, panting heavily, fisting his sheets.

\--

Karl shudders, pushes his face into his hands. It’s cold, all of a sudden, in front of his pc, the monitors all set up and on and running, streamlabs open, twitch on. It’s just a normal stream. 

Why is he so nervous? He fingers the mouse, fitted to the dips of his hand. The cursor hovers over _go live._

(He’d promised Sapnap to a call when he streams.)

_Why is he so nervous?_

(the dream, too real.)

The kiss lingers still on the bridge of his nose, stubborn and scorching. It’s like he’s afraid that the imaginary kiss’ll show on camera.

 _He’s nervous_.

He hasn’t noticed that his right hand’s shaking the slightest bit on the mouse, pressing on the left button, not hard enough to click on the command. Oh my god. 

He shuts his eyes, and he makes to shakily press on his right index finger. 

Stream starts, and he’s adjusted the face camera as horizontal as possible, smiles to the camera when chat rolls in with various greetings and _‘first’_ s. He does a funky little wave, and hopes his plastered smile doesn’t give off how frazzled he feels. 

“Hey, chat! What’s up?” he grins, adjusts his headphones. Subscriptions ring off and he rattles off some of them, idly narrating through the list of twitch users. 

Discord pings lightly, and he turns to his other monitor. 

_Sapnap_

_youre live! vc?_

He swallows. Heat swirls again, low in his head. 

The cursor on the typing bar blinks curiously at him for a while before he smashes out a short message.

sure :) vc 2? i’m gonna get on the smp for a bit i think

_always up for a chill stream :)_

He hates him. The small smiley Sapnap’s sent mocks him when his heart skips unintentionally. 

_Why’s he gotta be this…_

_Perfect._ He never shows his face, hates anything that has his face in it, but he is gorgeous, pretty, and everyone who’s thrashing on Sapnap’s jealous. 

He swallows thickly again, and he forces himself to make small talk for the chat when he joins vc 2.

“Hey.” Sapnap’s voice is sleepy, rough like he’d just woken up. 

“Hey!” Karl forces out, smiling wearily. 

“You look very handsome today, Karl, like always.” He’s teasing, he always teases. 

“Part of the Karl package,” he jokes. “being pretty all the time.” Sapnap hums in quiet agreement. The room spins, just a little.

His eyes dart to chat, and a message flashes for just a split second with how fast chat is going, but he’s flushed and flustered and wrecked just by the innocent message. 

**END3RCH3ST:** they’re such a cute couple omg 

“Uh,” he goes, because he knows he blushes easily, and a side glance at the face camera tells him that the pink flush that litters his cheeks is shining and obvious. He presses a hand across his face, a valiant effort to hide. 

“Karl, you’re blushing?” Sap says, mocking softly, a hint of a snicker in his voice. His voice wraps him in its hot chocolate quality. 

“For you.” He banters back. (it’s _true_. Sapnap doesn’t have to know that.)

Sap’s small hums in the background in an unknown tune drops suddenly at his words and Karl’s heart follows. He hopes falteringly that Sapnap didn’t catch the earnest pitch in his voice. 

“’Choo doing?” Sapnap says, and it’s muffled slightly by something. Karl tries not to take it to heart. 

“Smp stuff,” Karl yawns, shifting on his elbows. “Wedding stuff maybe? Or the El Rapids stuff Q was going on about in the storyline.”

Sapnap chuckles quietly. “I forgot about the wedding.” 

“Of course you did, mister I’m-best-friends-with-GeorgeNotFound-therefore-I-never-ever-remember-or-show-up-to-events.” The sentence takes the crap out of his lungs for no reason, and he pauses to take a breath.

“Shouldn’t we create the wedding in real life?” isn’t the sentence that Karl’s expecting to drop out of Sap’s very imaginably red lips (very kissable) next, and he voices so.

“No, but like, not the whole marriage part,” Sap laughs, a real one this time. “Y’know, meet up. At yours. With Quackity? If you want,” Sapnap continues.

“We should!” He says. 

(His hands tracing Sap’s hips, pulling him closer, lacing fingers through his dark dark locks, stark against Karl’s pale skin-)

Sap laughs again, and he’s slipping down.

(Soft whispers right beside Sapnap’s ear, Sap’s arms wrapped around the nape of his neck, lips inches away, breath mixing, brings his lips up just slightly to glance Sapnap’s forehead with a kiss just like the one from his dream-)

He exhales shakily into the material of his sweater he’d bunched up in a fist. 

“I wanna see you, Karl, see- y’know, _you_. Apparently you’re taller than I am. I’m gonna go to confirm that.” Sap’s voice drops to a whisper, barely heard, and it sounds fucking genuine.

_“I wanna see all of you.”_

And he fucking _reels_. He ducks his head down, and covers it up with a strained laugh. Chat is flying fast, so quick, and his view count is steadily rising, watching-

Watching him fall apart under Sapnap’s carefully crafted words, strung intentions, his pretty pretty fingers and steel grey eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know what Sapnap’s doing. 

_Stop fucking playing with me._ He shudders into the cotton material. 

“Karlnap real?” he suggests, and he almost misses the quiet giggle at the other end. 

“Maybe,” Sap plays back into the playboy character he is, flirts right back, because it’s how he just is. It’s not because he likes Karl or anything. He’s just that fucking stupid for hoping it. 

“Ay, Carlos, Sapnap!” Q screams the moment discord tings with the join sound and Karl snaps slightly inside. 

“Quackity,” Sapnap greets, and he goes from quiet to quieter. 

Karl shuts up too, and there’s nothing from the both of them as Quackity rambles, a comforting drone of obscenities and vulgarities that weave effortlessly through his normal speech patterns, and he feels grounded by it, but so so far away from Sapnap, who’s silent. 

He turns to start up minecraft, and they talk throughout the stream as normal.

\--

#karlnap is trending fifth on twitter. ‘Content creator Karl Jacobs flirts with fellow content creator Sapnap, teasing thirty thousand live viewers with their offhanded flirty banter.’ 

It feels illegal to stare at the tag for so long, even more so when he taps on the tag, and pictures of his red-faced self posted and put up on the internet with captions of concerning amounts of capslock. 

SEAN!!! _@thesisean_ :   
#SAPNAP: I wanna see you. I wanna see all of you.   
NAWWWWW THEY’RE TEASING US SO BAD PANDASTWT AND HONKTWT #karlnap

The phone clatters from his grip. He’s heaving and disoriented.

He dives to his bed, and he flops down, face-up, phone pressed tight to his chest, where his heart beats against his chest loudly, frantically, throwing itself repeatedly against his ribs until they bruise. His breathing is fast, ragged. 

_I hate you._

(Steel grey stares steady at him, and Sapnap leans into his cupped hand, pushes his cheek against his palm in a way that feels so trusting, genuine, loving-)

“Stop it,” he mutters, and it’s to himself and his lovesick heart.

Fuck you. Karl grits his teeth, and it’s all he can do before he wraps his hands around his body and curls up on himself, and his phone slips and plunges from his hand onto his bed. He runs his fingers through his own light brown curls, and imagines that it’s Sapnap’s. 


	2. Heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karl mopes and receives an angry phone call.

Karl wakes up in the rain.

He’s clutching a black umbrella, and vibrations go down the handle of the umbrella as he grips it tight like a lifeline. Rain falls in a near constant pattering on the arc of the material, and it’s almost a steady rhythm, one that grounds him. 

The moon peaks down at him, a soft glow on his skin. The pavement is paved with bricks, solid under his feet.

He’s in front of a bridge. 

Someone familiar balances perfectly on the railings of the bridge, hands intertwined around a streetlamp next to him, swaying lightly in the rain, unbothered.

Before he thinks, his feet skid and pick themselves towards the dark-haired figure standing unabashed in the rain, and the umbrella slides in his slack grip and trails after his yearning body. He blinks against the onslaught of water droplets. His eyelashes flash with moisture, and he stares right ahead to the boy with the bandana.

“Karl.” Warm, again, again, swirls like hot chocolate on a cold day. Karl grins shakily.

“Sapnap.” It breaks of in a voice crack. He cringes slightly at it. He sounds utterly pathetic.

He’s relieved of his glowing embarrassment when Sapnap laughs lightly at his accidental blunder, and it spreads streaks of beautiful red across the younger’s cheeks. He wants so _bad._

He doesn’t know what he wants. 

“Come on up?” Sap asks, and he startles at the tanned hand he sticks in his face, a eager invitation.

Who would he be if he didn’t accept?

It’s with hesitancy that he grasps his hand in a poor grip, but the younger manages to pull him up onto the railings with surprising strength. For a moment Karl’s pressed tight to Sap’s chest. The moment is suspended, quiet, the rain around them pausing in it’s unrelenting pattering to give the barest moment between the two of them. Sap stares steady at him, hand curled tight around his own, and Karl thinks _kiss me._

_Kiss me before it’s over, before we have to go back to pretending._

Sap drops his piercing, warm grey gaze, and the moment unravels before him, despite his attempts to gather it back together. _Kiss me._

He’s a coward, so he doesn’t speak it out.

Karl slips slightly on the wet railings, legs weak on uncertain ground. Sap slips his hand from his own (he misses the warmth) before the same hand wraps uncertainly around his waist, steadying him. 

“Wanna, like, dance?” Sap tilts his pretty, pretty face into a half-smile. His heart aches terribly at it. Light dances, bright, playful, enamoring, in the depths of his steel grey irises. 

“Dance?” he asks, confused, “on here?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you _crazy?_ We could slip-" he begins, panicked, but the air is knocked right out his lungs when Sap positively throws both of them off the railings of the bridge. He doesn’t manage to scream when Sap’s hand on the streetlight swings them right around, and suddenly they’re on the other side of the streetlight, adrenaline running wild and pumping frantic heartbeats in his ears. 

“You liked that?” Sap asks breathlessly in his ear, just the slightest bit unsure, chin on his shoulder, lips brushing Karl’s ear just for a second. He’s even more frightened by their proximity. 

“No!” He bursts out, flustered, “That was honking scary, that’s what it was!”

“Scaredy cat, Karl Jacobs,” Sapnap laughs, tingly in his ear, arm wrapped snug (like it fit) around his lower chest. 

Only when I’m around you. You make me nervous.

“Wanna _really_ start?” 

“Start? We haven’t started?” Karl’s voice ends with a terrified up pitch. He thinks Sapnap grins mischievously at that. The bastard.

“’Course _not_ , Jacobs.” He yelps when Sapnap lets go completely of the streetlight, and they’re completely without the support of an object except the nimbleness of their feet. 

“No-!” Karl shrieks, clutching desperately at Sap’s shirt, which comes off as damp in his hands. 

“Don’t worry,” whispered soft in his ear. It takes away his breath if he had any left. “I won’t let you fall.”

“I won’t let you fall.”

He’s safe, safe in Sapnap’s warm, warm arms, and he shuts his eyes. 

“Open your eyes, darling, keep your eyes on the moon.” 

A hand gentle on his, an arm curved beautifully around his torso, hips flush against his own, guiding, guiding. Hot breaths on the back of his neck, slightly ragged, beautiful all the same.

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right.” Sapnap murmurs quietly against his skin. 

“Don’t worry,” Karl whispers back, eyes blurring and wetting, glaring when his tears catch the moonlight. “You’re doing it good enough for me.” The handle of the umbrella is hard and unrelenting in his pliant fingers, slick with rainwater.

Karl opens his eyes, and the ceiling fan whirrs mockingly at him, and he feels the gentlest, barest touch of a kiss on the nape of his neck. 

\--

He’s not online for the rest of the week. It’s his restlessness that prompts him to open twitter, but when it loads finally on his phone, the first tweet that loads is one from the man haunting his thoughts and dreams. It’s a fucking picture of Sap in a GeorgeNotFound hoodie, face angled so that most of his face is hidden on camera, except the curve of his eyelashes and the dark bangs swept messily over his forehead. _Fuck._ He can’t deal with this. Not at all.

He dips in and out of sleep on his bed, wakes up for late meals, and his dreams are devoid of the man with the brightest laughter, and he doesn’t know in his muddled state if he hates or is grateful for it. His phone rings and rings and rings until he shuts it completely off. 

He thinks someone’s calling when he wakes groggily after a long while. His phone vibrates beside him. He thought he'd shut it off.

It’s Quackity. Karl picks up his badly-timed discord call. 

“Q,” he says softly, the moment it goes through and he brings it up to his ear. It’s different from his usual hyperenergetic self. He knows Quackity hears it.

“Karl.” Not Carlos. 

He winces slightly. “Not a good time, Q-"

“It’s never a _good_ time, is it, Karl? Not with how you’ve been acting lately!” Quackity’s voice is fully accusatory. He deserves it, he thinks.

“’M so sorry, Big Q, I’ve been—" he swallows, “distracted.”

There’s a pause. Karl pushes his free hand despairingly from his face to his hair. Alex is angry.

“You’ve been distracted? Just ‘distracted’?” Quackity mocks, “You haven’t been fucking online for the past _week_ , Karl Jacobs! No explanation, my fifty-something calls to you going off with no answer-! Don’t get me fucking started on your friends, Karl Jacobs. Dream’s been asking for you (worriedly, you know how he’s like with people he wants to protect), Bad’s concerned to no end and he keeps asking me on stream, Karl! George, he sucks at this shit, but he cares for you, Karl; I hear his frown in his voice when we bring you up! Don’t get me fucking started on the fucking honktwt or feraltwt or whatever they call themselves- fans! Fucking hell, Karl Jacobs, even _Sapnap—_ "

His heart freezes. “No,” he whispers.

Q breaks off. Karl hears his riled-up breathing at the other end of the line. 

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Q asks. It’s barely audible, a sharp contrast that almost gave him whiplash. 

“Maybe,” he breathes back. 

There’s the longest pause. He’s fucked up. 

He opens his mouth, ready to apologise or spout a quick goodbye or retreat with no explanation back into the caverns of his bedsheets.

“You should have fucking _told me_ , Jacobs!” 

“Sorry,” he mutters, shutting his eyes.

“What, I’m your best friend for show? If you’re gonna tell me fucking _nothing_ about the things that bother you, why am I still here?”

“’M sorry, Q,” he says, dejectedly. “’M really sorry.”

“I’m not _mad_ , Karl.” Quackity tells him, and it’s sad. He hurts. “Just- disappointed. You coulda have told me, Karl. I’m not just canonically your best friend on the smp.” 

Karl shudders. “God, I’ve- I’ve messed up everything, haven’t I?”

Q sighs, fabric shifting faintly in the background. “So let’s fix it. Together.” 

“I’m not fixable.” Karl tries. 

“You don’t need fixing.” Q replies.

“You know, I thought you would like to hear what Sapnap said.” Quackity continues, after a long silence, “the week you were gone. Are still gone.” He thinks the end is punctuated with a steely glare. 

He doesn’t know if he’d like to hear it or not. He thinks it might break him more.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Tell me, Karl. Tell me if you want it or not, and I’ll spill. It’s up to you.”

“Will it break me?”

“Depends.”

Karl takes a breath.

“I’ll take my chances, then.”

\--

_Q and Sapnap are in a call._

_“Have you seen Karl recently?” Sapnap asks him. Quackity blinks and furrows his brow._

_“No- no, I haven’t.”_

_Sapnap is quiet. He likes to be quiet a lot more now. Quackity notices it (the law student stuff helps), and a hand comes up to idly splay flat on his beanie._

_“Hey, man, you’re really quiet. Like, really quiet. Where’s the your mama jokes?”_

_“Don’t feel like them.” Sapnap mutters into his headset._

_“Something bothering you?”_

_A breath, exhaled softly. “No. Uh, a little.”_

_“Elaborate?” Quackity hums, eyes on his screen, clicking his tongue a little as he tries to navigate the nether with beds in hand. He needs netherite. George is a fucking asshole for laughing at his miseries when his previous set despawned. He spams the shift button when he comes across Bad’s sprinting minecraft avatar._

_“Nothing much, I- I guess. Just, sleep and shit. Insomnia’s an ass.” Fabric shuffles in the background._

_“You on bed?” Quackity says, whirls the words so that they turn jokingly suggestive._

_“Oh my god, shut up.” Sapnap almost certainly rolls his eyes at him. “It’s not like my sleep schedule has ever been good, it’s just—” he lets out a frustrated sigh. It doesn’t sound like that’s the thing that’s positively ruffling his feathers._

_“Just?” Q follows his wavelength, just to see where the thought’s headed._

_“Fuck.” More shifting. “I don’t know, dreams and stuff.” The last part comes out embarrassed._

_“Dreams?” the older echoes._

_“It’s stupid.” Muffled. He’s probably shoved his face into a pillow. The tone of his voice is mangled and scrambled in the cotton._

_“How so?”_

_“I—” Sapnap sighs from his end. “I’m gonna go get some water. I'm thirsty.”_

_“No, no, no, come back, answer the question first-!” Quackity’s intrigued. He wants to know the answer. Too bad Sapnap’s stubborn as hell. Fuckin’ Gryffindor type of shit._

_“I’ll tell you when I get my water. You’re streaming?”_

_“Nah.” A small noise of surprise in the background, supposedly distant from his mic._

_“You aren’t streaming? And on the Dream smp? Funny,” Sapnap remarks, just the slightest of smug._

_“A mexican’s gotta do what a mexican’s gotta do.”_

_A laugh. “Okay.”_

_“You tellin’ me, now?”_

_“No,” Sap laughs again, sounding like he can’t believe that the moment’s happening._

_“Come on, Sapnap, for Karl?”_

_A sharp breath. “Nah, nah, I—”_

_“Friends don’t lie, Sap, you promised!”_

_“I did not! When-!_

_“Whatever, man.” Sapnap breathes into the mic, a steady rapid rhythm._

_“Just, you know, forests. Umbrellas and rain. Ka—”_

_“Karl?”_

_“No.” It’s flustered, too quick to be a mistake._

“Carlos?” _Quackity gives a loud laugh, “Please, what are you both_ doing _in those dreams—”_

“Quackity.” _It’s low. There’s something under his strained vocal cords._

_Q stills immediately, retreats. He’d hit a nerve without noticing._

_“Sorry,” he mutters. Sapnap says nothing._

_The next day, they both talk like the conversation’s never happened._

_\--_

_“I’m not supposed to tell you that.”_

Karl’s head is spinning, spinning, eyes sliding unfocused as the room honestly drops away from him. He’s upright on the bed. He’s shaking. His heart goes _ba-dum, ba-dum_ , quick and irregular, in his chest, an uncontrollable mess of leaps and faltering, and his chest in heaving, quick, shuddering with half-breaths. 

“Are you okay, Karl?” Q’s voice is slightly panicked. He can’t bring himself back to the ground, head flung so high up the clouds he doesn’t think he could fall back down if he wanted to. 

“No,” he squeezes out for Quackity’s sake. “Not at all.”

And then Alex positively snickers at him, and it yanks him down yet again. 

“Hey-! Why’re you laughing?” he pouts, slumping, adrenaline running fast, furious, angry waves in his veins. He presses the fingers of both his hands to his fluttering heart. 

“You sound so in love, Karl Jacobs- Karl Jacobs, Karl Jacobs-!”

“Fuck off, Q,” he mutters, but they both hear how light his voice is.

“You’re happy, Karl- and I wanna know why. Is he dreaming of you that important to you?” Q says.

“I’ll tell you,” Karl promises, and Quackity shifts eagerly at the other end of the discord call. “But not yet. Not today.” 

Because how is it _possible?_

How is it possible that when he dreams, he dreams of him and Sapnap and Sapnap and him alone in forests big and grand and full of fallen leaves, in the light rain, on a rain-drenched bridge? How likely, is it, that they’ve been dreaming of the exact things they’d dreamed of, dancing and sizing each other up and touching and fire and heat, heat, heat everywhere, of Sap’s voice and his half-lidded stormy eyes and his smaller hands and his body and everything, everything that’s just simply _Sapnap_ , plain and simple and so, so beautiful he wants to break down on call. 

Heat spirals, kicked up again in the wells of his heart and the tips of his feet, the hair of the nape of his neck. He whispers, _oh my fucking god._

“I _need,”_ he’s stuttering, tripping over words and syllables and everything and everything so, so unimportant, insignificant, to him now that Sap’s finally, finally within an arm’s reach, not several steps away from a tornado that’s going to spiral out of control. _“I need—”_

_I need him. Where is he?_

“Calm down, Karl,” he hears Quackity in the distance, but he’s too high up to care. 

“Sapnap,” he stutters out, tongue tripping. _“Sapnap.”_

“He hasn’t been online, much. More than you, obviously, but less. He hasn’t talked to me like two days after the whole dream thing.” 

“I’m—” Karl swallows, “Is he okay?” 

Q chuckles, a sad note. “Are _you?”_

Karl stills.

A faraway voice whispers, everything sweet and warm and familiar but not, _fuck you, Karl Jacobs_ , and he blinks and his vision darkens in harsh response. 

_Call him_ , Q calls, and Karl’s fumbling with the phone cradled in his hands. _Call him, call him quick, take him back from the edge, take him and call him yours, yours, yours._

_Kiss him and whisper sweet nothings in his ears, and hold him tight enough so that he feels stable enough to not run._

Karl burns with heat, inside out, burns with his oxygen just out of sight, his oxygen retreating, and he thinks he should stretch out. Try.

Try. Try, _try, try,_ and _try_ until he’s got his oxygen back in his desperate embrace. 

(Sapnap’s icon blinks with a grey inactive light and _last active five days ago_ , and it rings through, endlessly, stuck on a merciless loop.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please tell me if the lengths of each chapter is adequate, because I always worry that it's way too short for posting :)  
> comments r so so appreciated it makes my day <3
> 
> -tion


	3. Anywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karl kisses Sapnap in a car coursing down the roads. Someone else confronts them both.
> 
> cw // hinted internal homophobia, body issues.

He’s in a car, now. 

He’s on the right, riding shotgun, back pressed against the seat. The car’s cruising, the trees and plains a blur as they whip right past. 

Someone hums, beside him, a strange and comforting melody, quick tunes that seem off, but a melody regardless. And of course. Of course it’s Sapnap, but even more devastatingly pretty than usual, head tilted to the front so that he’s able to focus on the road ahead, eyelashes cast in gold. The bandana is, as usual, there, but his hair is just the tiniest bit longer, long enough to bunch into twin space buns on his head. 

Karl’s heart aches and throbs with his head. It’s a wavering rhythm, a bittersweet thrum. 

“Hey, Sap.” This time Karl knows, gets the courage to say the one same greeting sentence before the other man does. 

Sapnap doesn’t look at him. It shouldn’t feel more bitter than it actually is. 

“Hey.” He doesn’t say his name. He misses the way it winds from Sap’s mouth.

Karl blinks, shrugging backwards, pushes the back of his head into the headrest. 

“Where are we going?” Is the question he whispers, hoarsely. 

Sap keeps his eyes on the road. “Anywhere you want to go.”

“And where is that?”

“Anywhere.” Sap keeps it at that. It tastes bitter on Karl’s tongue. 

The windows are down. Air rushes past when he hesitantly places his forearm on the sill of the wound-down window. Wind brushes through his hair, plays with his locks, scuffs them so that they brush his eyes, obscure his sight. When he looks back, Sapnap is staring. The minute he stares back, the younger casts his gaze back on the road like he’d just scalded his skin with hot water. 

“Why won’t you look at me?” Karl asks, too out of it to think before the words spill and envelope them both in an imaginary mist. 

He blinks as Sap shrugs quickly, not denying, not confirming, bites his lower lip and snags it between his teeth. Karl traces the slight arc and furrow of his brow, the uncertainly laced in his tensed arms and his wrists, resting nervously on the wheel. 

“You’re not _real_ , Jacobs. I don’t have to do anything.” It’s quiet, blown quickly through barely parted lips. 

“I _am_ real, Sappy,” Karl says, and he knows now that this Sapnap, this Sapnap right here is dreaming, connecting with his own unconscious state, and they’re sharing a dream, impossibly, _impossibly_. 

“No.” Sap keeps his eyes determined on the road ahead. “You’re my mind making up fucking messed-up shit.”

“We can make it work,” Karl tries. 

“I don’t _want_ it to work.”

Something heavy wells, intrusive, in the bottom of his chest, a dragging weight. He gags at it. He thinks he tastes sour on his tongue. 

“Oh,” Karl says. 

Sap tilts his head down. He pulls a hand from the wheel to thread through his hair. Karl unintentionally follows the movement, the slender tips dipping through dark waves, space buns loose, unravelling.

“Fuck,” Sap mutters, harsh, grating, all to himself. “Fuck me.”

“Pandas-"

“Don’t call me that. Don’t you dare call me that.” Hissed, sharp, frazzled. Karl shuts up immediately. 

“Sorry.”

“Just-“ Sap sighs wearily, angrily. “Just stop talking or something, I’m thinking.”

The wind is suddenly cold, so very cold on his paper-thin skin. He redraws it, and he shivers slightly and draws back into his colour block hoodie. 

It’s uncomfortable, cold silence, the complete opposite of Sap’s warm voice. It’s unrelenting, and he hates it. Cold is bad. Warm is good. But warm is silent.

Karl curls a little, shifts his thigh on the seat. Sap isn’t looking at him. 

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, Sapnap.”

The wheel’s gripped tight, tighter in his hands. “But I am, Jacobs.”

“You’re perfect.” Karl grasps at stray straws. 

“I’m fucking not.” Sap laughs. He hates it. It sounds bitter, like hot chocolate with no sugar. It’s sad. 

“You know it, I know it, Jacobs. You’re talking about,” Sap pauses, “this body? This _face_? Nah. You’re better off without.”

“You’re pretty. Really.” Karl whips his head, stares straight at Sap. “Believe me, Sapnap. Believe that I’m not lying when I say you are.”

“Hard to believe you when that’s all people talk about behind their little screens.” It’s defeated.

“You’re so fucking pretty, Sap. Please. Believe it.” Karl says. In a bold motion- and he’s surprised when his body shifts much of its own accord, hands searching- he pushes forward and cups Sap’s cheek in a hand, rests the other on the hand on the wheel. “Look at me, Sap.”

Sapnap blows out his cheeks. “I don’t want to.”

“Please.”

Grey searches and he sees them flicker, anxious, disgusted, strained when they land on his own gaze. 

“Sapnap,” he says, edging into desperation. “Sapnap.”

“No,” breathes the man in question. 

“It’s- it’s-“ Sap gestures wildly, peeling his hands off the wheel entirely. “It’s wrong, Karl Jacobs.”

Karl grits his teeth. “No it isn’t.”

“I don’t-“ Sapnap gasps, a soft puff of air when Karl doesn’t fucking want to fucking hear any of the ridiculous bullshit pouring from Sap’s pretty, pretty mouth, and he doesn’t fucking care any longer, at all really, when he kisses him square on the lips. 

He’s squirming, pushing him away, but he’s still there, meshing their lips together, locked in a seemingly permanent kiss. It’s all his brain can compute, overloading at the sheer goodness of Sap’s lips molding against his, closes his eyes to it. 

“Sorry-“ Sap mumbles, some fucking stupid sentence about to be whispered into his lips, so he presses harder, pushing his hand on his face up, into dark hair, pressing into the space buns, unwinding them slowly. 

Karl hums, a short _shut up_ one.

So Sap lets him. 

Lets him push, take what they both want. He’s not quite clear, frankly, what he wants, but he thinks it’s synonymous with kissing Sapnap stupid, until they’re both panting and red-lipped and blissed out. He tastes like butterflies and air and warmth, warmth, warmth, the hearth of a fire. 

For now, when he kisses Sapnap in their little unimportant shared dream, he’s washed in peace, in a space where he feels nothing and nothing and Sap’s body against his and his lips and hair and waist.

He presses and presses until he’s gently swayed awake, a slow rocking, an ascend into awakening. 

The ceiling fan still whirrs, but it’s grateful now, glad. 

It’s completely unintentional when he brings the back of his hand to his lips, missing Sap’s taste. 

  
\--

  
Sapnap picks up his call, finally. He’s fucking glad.

“Hey.” Sap coughs, distorted. 

“Sapnap.” Karl purses his lips.

“Are you okay?”

Sapnap laughs drily. It echoes at the other end of the line. “Are you?”

Karl blinks. “I am. You should be, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Sap asks.

“Sapnap.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered quickly, lowly.

“Talk to me, y’know? Please.” 

“Big talk for someone who’s ignored me for a fucking week.” 

Karl stills. “I was a little out of it with… some stuff, y’know, but I’m fine now, Sappy- I think you should talk to me.”

A pause, “I am _this_ close to hanging up.”

“Okay, okay, okay!” Karl backtracks. “You don’t have to, y’know… but if you talked to me, I think things would be a lot better.”

“In what way?”

“Everything.” 

It’s breathing at the other end of the call. 

“What do you want me to talk about?” Sap asks, quiet, quiet, quiet, a cowering fire.

Karl swallows. _This is it._

“Your dreams, Sap, all of them. One-by-one, since the day I had that stream. Tell me about them.”

“Karl?” Sap’s breathing is picking up, rocking higher. “How-?”

Karl can barely, barely breath. The smoke of the fire crawls higher, higher, obscures his vision, blocks his throat. 

“Tell me, Sapnap. Wasn’t the car ride like running on air?”

  
\--

  
“I don’t like myself, Jacobs.”

“That’s okay. I like you enough.”

  
\--

“Hello, chat,” Sapnap says, webcam broadcasted to Karl (and only him), and he laughs a little before his eyes flicker to Karl, boring into him, asking him a silent question.

_What are we?_

He’s not going to answer that. It’s going fast, faster. He hasn’t put a label on this little mess of an affair of sorts. 

Also, the whole world doesn’t have to know about this stuff. 

“Speedrunning for a bit today, guys,” Sapnap says. His eyes linger on the webcam camera for a bit before he directs it back on his main screen. 

“Karl’s here, I think- hold on a minute.” Sap smiles, just a small one where his lips curve and his eyes crinkle just the slightest bit, the one that steals all his breath away. Karl almost misses the spoken cue to enter the discord call before Sapnap rolls his eyes at the webcam and tilts his head jerkily as a physical gesture, and he fumbles badly with the mouse.

“Hey, Sapnap’s chat! How’re you all doing,” Karl greets. He’s feeling better than ever, even more than the first time he streamed and his viewer count topped at two thousand. 

Chat runs past, various greetings, short and sweet or long and wordy. 

Sap grins. “Here we go, see if we can break sub thirty.”

Karl thinks he could watch him forever. From the angle Sap’s hotness levels have increased tenfold, and when he twists his head to glance briefly at another monitor, his neck is angled beautifully. He kind of wants to run his fingertips over the skin there.

He and Sapnap talk casually while the younger’s keyboard goes click clack in the way it’s always done. 

Until his own discord beeps with a message, a direct one. 

No one ever messages him in dms, especially in discord.

It’s with confusion and foreshadowing dread that he clicks on the unread message.

It’s from Dream.

Dream

  
_karl_  
_after stream i want you and sapnap to come talk to me_

Shit. Is this about the whole one-week-ia stuff? He bites his lower lip, looks towards Sap’s facecam. He’s laughing about an instant death to an iron golem. He looks like sunshine personified. 

I’ll tell him later.

  
\--

  
Karl sees Dream’s muted discord icon in vc 3. It’s alone there. He’s waiting for them.

He swallows. Dream’s always been a little bit of an idol and a little bit of an intimidation source. And a very _very_ caring friend. Sometimes overly so. And nosey. Well. 

Dream’s a pretty cool guy. Karl just doesn’t know if he wants to talk to him just yet, when none of them have figured out what to call this whole bizarre situation.

When Sapnap expresses out his goodbyes and laughs quietly, waves a small hand even when stream doesn’t have his facecam on, Karl’s brought back slightly.

“Ah, Dream wants to talk to us, Sap,” Karl pretends that he’s just noticed the very ominous direct message from the man in question. 

“What about?” His voice is still unaffected, but his eyes dart immediately and lock at the camera. They’re really pretty, really. He doesn’t think he appreciates them enough.

“I don’t know,” he forces. It’s pretty obvious what Dream wants. “I think he’s in vc 3 right now.” 

“Oh, sure.” Sap shrugs.

“Anyway, bye, chat, see ya,” He hustles, and he clicks offline, raids Bad, who’s doing something with the red vines arc. 

They both hop into the voice chat. Karl takes a breath, like he’s drowning.

“Hello!” Dream tells them and unmutes the moment they join. 

“Hi,” Karl greets back. Sap hums a hello. 

There’s a semi-awkward silence. Karl shifts in his gaming chair. It creaks softly under his weight. 

“I was watching your stream earlier. You guys seemed like you were having fun.” Dream directs at Sapnap. 

“Was nice not doing collage work for a bit.” 

Dream hums. 

“Anyway, I wanted you guys here to talk about some stuff for a bit. I was going to pm you both privately, but well, I realised you were both in a call, so it was kinda like two birds with one stone.” Dream continues. “I’m sure you have like an inkling of what I’m about to interrogate you both about.”

Straight to the point, but slinking a little around the actual tone of voice Dream’s going for, the words unspoken between the lines. Much like how he likes subtweeting the morons who mess with him, or subtly prodding at his thoughts about a specific scandal, he’s careful with his words when he wants to, silently digging. 

It’s _scary_. 

Karl doesn’t ever want to be the end of his carefully-spun words. Doesn’t _ever_. But he _is_ , right now, and that alone is nerve-wracking. 

“No, I don’t,” Sap says slowly, testing the waters. “What are you talking about?”

“You _do_ know, Pandas,” Dream says, almost earnestly. 

“No, we don’t.” Karl jumps in. He swallows when he feels Dream’s attention shift immediately, fully on him. “Uh- mind telling?”

“No, no- not at all, Karl,” Dream says. 

“What’s going on between you and Sapnap?”

Heat spreads across the skin on his cheekbones, down the curve of his shoulders, trickles down the backs of his fingers. He’s disoriented, caught like a single bird in a storm. He’s anticipated the question, but Dream’s phrased it so clearly, so simply, and he’s been thrown off-course. 

Funny how it works.

“Nothing,” Sap says quickly, but his voice has never been good at hiding his emotions, and Karl winces at the flustered tone. 

“Uh-huh,” says Dream. 

“Really.”

“Yes, of course.” Skepticism bleeds from Dream’s sarcastic words. “Oh come on now, Sapnap, Karl, you know I know you both too well for you to keep this little- little _charade_ going on. What’s happening between you two?”

Karl stutters. “It’s- it’s-“

It’s _what?_ Private. _Special_. Their little cove. A small space in a tent only for two. He desperately doesn’t want to let Dream in (just yet).

They’ll figure it out, but without any outsiders. 

“Secret,” he finishes. 

Dream audibly frowns. “You both don’t seem to be dealing with this- whatever this is- too professionally. That one radio-silence week-“

“I _said_ ,” Karl breathes, and it’s stronger, more certain now. “we’ll figure it out. On our own.”

Dream pauses. The voice-chat is tense, a string pulled taut, about to snap. 

The vc echoes with a sharp buzz of _user joined your channel_.

“Hey guys,” George yawns sleepily, “what’s up?”

“Shut up, George,” Sap murmurs, snappish.

“Oh.” George realises he’s landed himself in a landmine, and he exits quietly as fast as he’d joined.

It’s a silence filled with a few seconds when Dream speaks. 

“I hope you both know what you’re doing.”

Karl’s head pounds, a steady rhythm, a beat in the tempo of his heart. 

“I hope so, too.”

Dream pauses. 

“I worry for you two a little too much, sometimes. I forget that you aren’t fourteen anymore, Pandas.” 

Sapnap scoffs. “Was I really that bad as a kid?”

“A little. It’s like protective older brother syndrome.” 

Sap’s eyes dart almost casually to the face camera. Karl’s almost forgotten it was there. 

“Thanks, brother, really.” It’s filled with over-spilling semi-concealed gratitude, for how long Dream’s been a support at Sapnap’s side, and Karl pauses to marvel at their friendship. 

“No problem, Sapnap.” Warmth. 

“Anyway,” Dream clears his throat. “I care for both of you, and I really really don’t want to see you both come out of this hurting. So promise me you’ll do this _right_.”

Karl smiles slightly. “Thanks, Dream. You’re a good friend.”

Dream sighs softly from his end. “No problem, Karl. No problem.

“I should go.”

“Bye, Dream,” Sapnap says.

“Goodbye, Sapnap, Karl. See you both around.”

The voice chat rings with the sound of _user exited your channel_. 

“Karl?”

“Yeah,” Karl whispers, in a daze. “Yeah.”

Sap blinks at the camera. The storm in his eyes is swirling, rampant, flickering. It’s mesmerising.

“Karl?”

Yeah. He swallows, and he tilts his head at Sapnap’s broadcasted image. 

“Uh huh,” He whispers, in response, tells Sap that he’s still there, and not moving. Not moving on, soon, yet.

“Poor George.” Sap laughs, all of a sudden, and his face contorts suddenly and they’re both laughing, and he’s slapping the desktop with force, giggling with tears in his eyes. 

“Oh my god,” Karl gasps. “Oh my _god_.”

They’re real, they’re laughing, and Sapnap is laughing high and bright in a discord call with him. Warmth sloshes, again, again, at his insides, and now there’s his oxygen, fuels his flickering fire, wraps him with its freshness. 

It’s enough. He _loves_ him. It’s the sudden realisation that makes him choke on his saliva, choke on his laughter. He’s going fast. Neither of them are prepared for the sheer hugeness of the fact.

“Are you okay?” Sapnap asks quickly, mirth still laced in his honey words as he giggles, and Karl sighs, shakes his head. 

“Not really. But I think I will be.” Sap widens his eyes at the camera. He’s beautiful. He won’t ever stop noticing the fact.

“Okay.” Sap says, and the words wrap him up with its gentleness and its smooth warmth. 

It’s okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey!  
> so sorry for almost two weeks of no update after i uploaded those first few chapters in the span of three days. i was really really busy with school and my parents have started to restrict my time on the computer.
> 
> not a chapter i'm very much proud of, but it's one that's longer than the others. i shouldn't actually write stuff in blocks of thirty minutes each, huh.
> 
> also thank u for 69 subs on this fic aha i've never really had this much traction on a fic within the first two chapters before :)  
> -tion
> 
> p.s. i've decided the number of chapters and the content in it, so we're 1/3 through now :)!! also, hope you caught the Running on Air ref


	4. Ringtone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karl wants a lot. Sapnap doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. Dream is annoyed. George is fed up with their bullshit.

Bluebell woods.

The blue flowers brush against his skin when he shifts on the ground, sits cross-legged on the ground. They’re a light kiss on skin that feels too sensitive, too fragile in a dream-like state. His hair falls unceremoniously into his eyes. He distractedly brushes them off out of the way. 

“Hello, Jacobs.” Says honey. Karl smiles.

“Sapnap.” It’s pathetic how weak he sounds, like he’s got ghosts in the head, but he doesn’t care.

The dark-haired man laughs breezily beside him, a light tingle in the shifting wind. Karl glances to his right and tanned hands graze the stalks of bluebells, follow the sway and dip of their thin stalks. He drags his gaze up, and he sees Sap’s side profile, nose defined, lips slightly parted, unaware, eyebrows graceful and arching; highlights, frames his grey eyes. They’re trained on the push of hand among the bluebells, shadowed by eyelashes. He’s pretty. He’s never understood why Sapnap thinks otherwise. 

“Bluebells are pretty.” Sapnap says. “I like it. It’s my favourite flower.” He giggles softly when he tugs at a single stalk, pulls it free. The bluebell sits, the blue striking against his palm. If he squints, it looks more purple. It suits him.

“Yeah.” Karl swallows, and in a brash moment, he steels his eyes on Sap, runs his gaze over his face, his shoulders, his back. “Pretty.”

Karl startles when something cold brushes his scalp, hooks on his ear. Sapnap grins, playful, free. His eyes dance with the storms, mirthful, bright. The bluebell presses itself like it fit against his head. “You look good like that.”

“Thanks,” Karl whispers, trailing an arm up to the bluebell, rubs at the petals. He blinks, shy.

Sapnap shifts and there’s movement when he rights his legs, wraps his arms around under his knees. His chin finds the top of his knees and rests there. 

“Funny how it works,” Karl says.

“What works?”

“This,” Karl gestures vaguely at the scene, at himself and Sap in the sea of bluebells that stretch as far as the eye goes. “this whole- whole _shared dream_ thing, Sappy.”

Sapnap hums acknowledgement. His feet are bare when they brush against his clothed knee from his cross-legged position. 

“I don’t know how it works,” the younger shrugs, “but frankly, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

Karl grins. “Really?”

“You know, some things can’t be explained with science,” Sap rolls his eyes. “Universe, milky way, solar system- who fucking _cares_. _I'm_ not going out there. I’ll, like, die on the way there if I got on a rocket anyway. Science is bullshit.” 

Karl laughs. “Aren’t you majoring in computer science?”

“And?” Sapnap scoffs loudly, throws his hands back so that his palms weave through bluebell stalks and plant themselves into the dirt so that he’s able to lean backwards. “Does that mean I have to like science in general? No. Literally, comp sci is about coding and shit, man, not recognising how inferior you are in the world, like an ant or smaller.” He flicks at a flower. It trembles and waves back and forth under his sarcastic touch. “I don’t need an existential crisis every day. I'm fine living life like this.”

“Uh huh,” Karl says, not really listening.

Sapnap sighs. “You aren’t listening, are you? Whatever.”

“No, no, no, you can continue ranting, Sap, it’s comforting.” Karl tilts his head so that his eyes meet Sap’s momentarily, laughs in his face. “I like hearing you rant.”

“Nimrod,” Sapnap mumbles, but it’s showered with graceful warmth. 

“Nuh-uh, Nimrod November was over, like, four months ago, Sap, you can’t use it unless you’re me.” 

“Okay, Karl Jacobs.” Sapnap grins wide. “I think being called ‘Karl Jacobs’ is punishment enough from the gods.”

“Nimrod!” Karl yells, and he’s scrambling to push Sap, and they’re both laughing as bluebells bend around their careless figures. Karl scrambles for a hold on Sapnap’s shoulder, and the other swipes for Karl’s back, his waist, pushing. 

It’s a wrestling competition afterwards, and they come out breathless, pants graced with the feeling of warmth wrapped and pressed into their bloodstream. Karl drops backward in exhaustion, coughing when he accidentally inhales saliva when he gasps air in. It’s punctuated with more giggles from both sides, twisting into his choking bout. 

“God,” Karl coughs out, and it’s a good type of god. “Goddamn.” 

“Yeah,” Sapnap agrees, sounding out-of-breath, winded like he is. 

When they lie in the sea of bluebells, their hands are quietly searching, reaching, when Sapnap hesitantly slips his smaller hand into Karl’s sweaty own. A comforting weight, something he’s able to physically hold onto, Karl giggles weakly. 

“Thank you.” Karl says, accidentally. 

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, honestly.

Sapnap is silent. 

“You think loud.” Karl tells him.

“That’s just because everyone thinks I _don’t_ think. At all. They’re mistaken.” 

“You _think_?”

“Oh, fuck off, Karl Jacobs.” Sapnap writhes out his hand from Karl’s now-lonely palm, and he whacks Karl on his shoulder. Karl laughs.

“You’re smart, Sapnap.” 

“Thank you, I know I am.” The cocky tone drops. “Man, schools tough.”

“So are relationships.” Karl says.

“Uh-huh.” 

They’re talking about this thing. Again. Sapnap feels like more than a best friend, but not yet a lover. It’s cruising fast from there to the whole ‘partner’ stage already, and Karl knows he’ll let it reach there. No matter sooner or later. It’s scary, overwhelming. He’s got no idea if he’s ready, if he’s prepared to let it happen, let Sapnap take his hand and lead him into an ever-tightening coil of whatever this is. He’s got no clue what’s it going to be like a day, a month, a week later. He’s got zero hunches on whatever he’s going to do once it does finally happen. Does he take the lead, fall into the role of the initiating lovesick lover? Or does he let Sap slip his hand, perfect, into his, and guide him wherever they’re going to go? 

Questions. He has no answer. 

“Karl?”

He has no answer. None of them has the answer. 

The stalk of bluebells formerly pushed by his curls sits, gentle, curving, in the hand that’s further from Sapnap. He rubs a thumb over the smooth stalk.

“Wait.” Is what he says. 

“Wait.”

  
\--

  
Q chuckles. 

“You want _me_ to ask your little boyfriend if he wants to go and see you in person?” 

Karl flushes. “He’s not a _boyfriend_ , Alex.”

“Not yet.” Quackity rolls his eyes at him on discord facetime when he blinks rapidly and covers the bottom half of his face. “Fine, the man you have a complicated as fuck relationship with. Happy?”

“No,” Karl says, muffled into the cotton of his sweater. “But it’ll suffice.”

“Ask him yourself.”

“No?”

Quackity eyeballs him and sighs. “I’m not a fucking matchmaker, Karl Jacobs; I’m a law student, not a marriage endorser.”

_“Marriage?”_ Karl yells at him.

Quackity cackles. “It’s true!” and when Karl opens his mouth indignantly, Q fires back first, “Don’t lie. I can hear the fucking lie about to come from your little mouth, Carlos.”

“I don’t want to marry him, Alex,” Karl says heatedly. 

“Not yet actually.” Quackity helps him. “Not never.”

“Nimrod.” Karl mutters. Q’s just scarily good at prodding in places people don’t want him to. Like, jokingly, of course.

It just doesn’t really sound like a joke right now coming from Q’s mouth. 

“You’re seriously considering it right now, Karl Jacobs? What the fuck? I thought your standards were low, but this is a new kind of low, Carlos.” Q laughs boisterously. 

“Shut up.”

“What a great comeback, mister Jacobs.”

All he gets is a resigned sigh from Karl’s end. 

“You’re hopeless,” Quackity mutters.

“I am aware.” 

“Good. You should stop being this awkward and man up and ask him yourself.” 

_“No?”_

“Yeah, you’re fucking hopeless.” Quackity confirms.

“Please?” he’s almost begging. 

“You’ve got to take risks, Carlos, especially if you’re this,” Quackity wrinkles his nose in mock distaste, “in fucking love with Sapnap.

“Are you willing?”

Karl blinks. Considers it for real.

“I am.”

“Then take the jump off the bridge and hope there’s a rope around your waist.”

  
\--

  
Karl’s not brave enough to ask him, even in just voice chat, let alone on stream, so he direct messages Sapnap. Ironic. He’s never used private dms much before this whole crushing thing started. The motions rock him to places he’d never thought he would go. 

_Hey_   
_Uh_   
_Are you online?_

_karl?_   
_well, yeah_

_Do you wanna like meet up? North Carolina?_

  
Sapnap is typing. The dots blink curiously at his faltering, fluttering heart. Drops off. Comes back again.

  
_at yours?_

  
Karl pauses.

  
_Yes_   
_Like, stay over for a bit_   
_A week? Could be less, could be more, idk_

_i don’t know_

  
Of _course_. Karl swallows, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He bitterly punches out,

  
_Oh_

_sorry_

_Not yet?_

_not yet_

_Time_. Karl thinks time will solve it, let them both twist and turn their view so that it aligns with the stars. 

Or not, when Dream literally points an accusing finger at Sapnap’s discord icon and demands for him to fly over. George, live on twitch, rolls his eyes and smiles and his lips curl. 

“You. Listen. Go. You literally went and met Skeppy on a whim, why can’t you with Karl?”

Karl knows Sap’s aware that he has George’s live audience spamming over his hesitance to actually meet him in person, and he brings the phone closer to his face, stares at George’s pale face in the screen. His headphones are heavy on his ears.

“I have school, dude.” Sap laughs awkwardly.

“Like that’s ever stopped you.” Karl forgets sometimes how good Dream is at debating. He has an unfairly smart mouth he kinda wants. Maybe he’ll slide in with a smooth pick-up line and Sapnap’ll come over. 

“Studies come first.”

“Uh-huh.” George says slowly. “Sure. Of course Sapnap prioritises his education above any of his—” George halts, and his eyes flicker to the facecam, like he’s reminding himself he’s still in the public eye. “friends.”

Quackity’s in George’s chat too, as it seems, and his discord rings with

  
Quackity  
 _‘Friends’ ;)_

_SHUT UP_

  
Someone in chat figures out that Karl is watching _(qv4ckity: KARL JACOBS IS ONE OF THE USERS IN CHAT)_ and the chat starts wilding, emotes placed after exaggerated comments, strange barking, a lot of capslock, and crying emotes after pleas for the duo to meet up. he chuckles just slightly at their antics, turns his attention back onto George’s slightly twitching face.

“Just meet up with him, Sapnap, is that too hard?” George snaps finally, slight annoyance weaved into his defined features. “You know, if I’m gonna hear you whine excuses I’m going to be the one who’ll provide the air ticket and fly your ungrateful ass to North Carolina.”

“I’ll go if you really buy me an air ticket, Georgie,” Karl hears the shit-eating grin behind it, and he doesn’t quite know whether to believe it or not.

“If it gets you to shut up, yes,” George sighs, clearly, undoubtedly annoyed now. His eyes drop shut as he pinches two fingers on the bridge of his nose. 

“I still don’t kn—”

“Shut up. Air ticket’s gonna go to you by a day.” George grits his teeth. 

“Who’s the sugar daddy now, George?” 

“Certainly not me, Dream.” George deadpans. 

_Is he really?_ Karl’s breath stills, rocks slower until he feels suspended in the air. 

“Done.” Clipped, George flickers an eye roll at nothing in particular. 

Discord,

  
George  
 _You’re welcome_

_Thanks George_

_You better be_

Karl smiles at the grey screen, and he’s certain the smile is lopsided, a hint towards loopy, but he doesn’t quite care.

Sapnap laughs on that discord call with Dream and George, and Karl’s heart follows his laughter, drags it up above the clouds, and it’s never been clearer.

  
\--

  
Karl  
 _< 3_

_< 3_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter sorry  
> they are meeting up now fr!! what's gonna happen? maybe weirdly poetic places like a mcdonalds at night and some discreet hand holding? maybe a single flower from the florist next door trying to clear their stock?
> 
> also, a small disclaimer you probably can disregard: i do not ship them, whether in real life or in their so-called 'personas'. i write purely to practice writing dynamics and to have fun :)
> 
> follow my [twitter](https://twitter.com/mistionii) where i'm not active


	5. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They meet each other for the very first time not behind a screen. 
> 
> 1\. Sapnap is as pretty as he is behind pixels on a discord call.  
> 2\. Karl didn't bring anything for their impulsive driving trip around the area.  
> 3\. There's no two beds or even a bed at all in the backseat of his car. Or a blanket.

When Karl sleeps, this time, his dreams are vague, faintly a sense of pull, of seeking, and nothing is discernible from the mess. For the first time in a long while, Karl does not dream. It’s weirdly disorientating, now that he’s suddenly stopped the shared headspace of a dream, and when he wakes, groggy, his head pounds like furious waves on the coastline. He grabs his head and groans, rubs the temple. 

_Holy fuck_. He gives an involuntary sound between a sigh and a grumble, and it’s slightly discomfiting that his vision spins and blurs a little as he rights himself up on his bed. 

_He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming_ , his head says on a broken record. _He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming_. The smile that splits his face in half and widens impossibly is pure, childish excitement. Yes, yes, _yes_. 

It’s extremely early in the morning, the outside sky tells him, dark and scattered with specks of stars too far away to be meaningful, significant. The morning air is stark cold against his skin, and he’s exhilarated. 

He’s so _fucked_. 

The blankets are thrown haphazardly on his bed. He moves through the house, sleep entirely thrown into a corner now. He wrenches the one window open, and as the wind soars in and plays with the strings of his colour block hoodie, he laughs, voice free, and grips at the roof, draws himself up above the windowsill, clambers onto the roof. 

The stars blink at his giddy demeanour, curious, but he does not answer their silent search for a verbal answer. He giggles to himself, and he thinks he looks silly from an outsider’s perspective, downright mad, but he doesn’t care. The wind curls and molds to his body, down his arm, through his hair, and it’s sweet.

He throws his hands back behind his head, and he tilts his head back for a while. His eyes slip close, and it’s bliss when all he feels is the breeze on his bare feet, the roof tiles beneath his crossed legs. God, this is happening. 

So surreal, so unreal, enough so that he wants to check with Sapnap, with George, _‘hey, are you really—‘, ‘did you really—'_ on his lips, incessant, and in his mind’s eye Sapnap would laugh and grin and his eyes would crinkle with semi-concealed amusement and joy, _‘yes, yes I am’_ , and George and his single ass would roll his eyes and drawl out exasperatingly, _‘yes, idiot, yes, go fuck in the same room or something but don’t tell us, thank you’_. 

‘Cause it’s unbelievable, unconceivable. Because holy fuck, he’s coming, he’s going to touch me, he’s going to smile at me, he’s going to—

He’s going to kiss me.

His lips tingle with the notion. He wants it so bad.

 _Oh_. So that’s what he wanted, a week ago (but it seems so long ago, so extremely long ago). He wanted that. He wanted Sapnap’s lips on his, to card his finger through dark, dark locks, the shade of a raven’s feathers, and he’d wanted him there, beside him, laughing quietly in his ear while he hugged him from the back, tips of his fingers brushing softly on his forehead, pushing away stray hair too stubborn to stay out of his eyes. He’d wanted Sapnap to be beside him, breathing in tandem, a kind pretty laugh forever on his lips, huffs of laugher pressed, unconscious, through parted lips, red enough to be kissed. He’s wanted everything Sapnap was, is, just everything about him, and it’s scary with the magnitude of this realisation. 

He wanted everything and anything of Sapnap, and it’s so extremely fucking scary that it’s blatantly true. 

He laughs to himself again, hums, pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes. Black explodes into dark shades of purple and blue. 

Holy shit, holy shit.

Oh my _god_. 

He collapses backward, and his head hits the ceramic of the roof unceremoniously, groans as his rubs at the affected spot, but the smile at his lips doesn’t ever leave his face. 

He lies there until sunrise. The sun peeks and glares at him with its sharp gold rays, and with that, he pushes down, slides into his house. He feels like he’s alive. 

He knows exactly how twitter is probably reacting right now. Caught in the storm of last night, probably, _‘what the fuck was that stream yesterday’_ , freaking out, and he’s not really bothered to confirm or deny any outrageous theories from teenage kids from all over the world. 

He rubs at his eyes and checks messages. 

  
Sapnap

_Karl :o_

_SAPNAP_  
_HOWD U GET MY NUMBER_

_George :)_

_Figured_  
_Anyway, when’s ur flight coming?_

_in a few hours_  
_i might get out of house soon_

_Oh my god_

_what?_

_This is._  
_What_  
_Surreal_  
_I don’t know_  
_Seems fake_

_it’s real_

_Oh my god_

_i know_

_Just whoa_

_im excited Karl_

_Me too_

_see you soon :)_

  
See you soon. 

He grins wide at his phone, at the smiley, and he clicks the off button on his phone to shut the screen down. 

Then again, maybe he should stream, farm some views for how frazzled and speculating the fanbase is right now. Fuck with them a little. Fun.

So he does it. A purely impulse-based stream, just a minute prior’s notification on his twitter account and a link to his twitch account. When he presses the ‘go live’ button on his twitch channel, he grins innocently at the face camera.

“Hello, chat!” he greets, cheery. Chat explodes instantly, and he knows three-fourths of the chat is going ‘HELLO????’ and ‘ANSWER OUR QUESTION’ all in capslock, and basic keyboard smashing, while the casual side of his viewers are doing the usual ‘first’ person to watch the stream thing. 

He ignores chat. “How’re you all doing!”

(felicidaddy31: NOT GOOD WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU N SAPNAP DOING?????)

Karl cocks his head in mock curiosity. “What do you mean, me and Sap? We’re okay right now, why?”

He grins. 

He knows whatever he’s doing.

“Oh, oh no,” Karl grins, “Oops, I think I’ve only been streaming for like ten minutes, but I need to move somewhere. I think I’ve gotta go. See ya!” It may be satisfying to wave vigorously to the camera, smile brightly and innocently and look through his eyelashes, and he almost bursts out laughing at chat. Chat is freaking out. He grins one last time, swipes a half-sweater-covered palm in a goodbye wave. He clicks _offline_. 

(karlnapity: I am now homophobic)

He’s definitely going to fetch Sapnap at the airport. 

\--

When he prepares, in the next few hours, it’s fretting over how he looks. The cowlick isn’t coming down, and he’s really pale, a side effect of being a Minecraft streamer with close to zero vitamin D. 

What does he wear? He rummages through his closet, musses most of the clothing inside up in a panicked attempt to find something half-decent. It’s almost as though he’s going on a fucking date. The cloth hangers rattle loudly on their racks as he pries through the layers of clothing, draws out a plain dark grey turtleneck, throws it unceremoniously on the bed, and a pair of white sweatpants follows. He briefly considers the colour block hoodie he always dons, the one that had the bisexual flag’s colours, and he shrugs, throws it on the clothing pile as well. 

He puts all those on, and he looks completely plain and basic without the hoodie, so he pulls it on too. The turtleneck sweater is snug and enveloping on his body. The edges of the hoodie’s sleeves cling tight to his wrists. 

He blinks at himself in the mirror, drags a hand idly down the length of his body, and a quick flicker of his eyes tells him that it’s almost time for him to get out from the house. 

He considers himself quietly, then shuts the door on the closet, and the mirror disappears with it. He shoves his phone, his keys, wallet and a pair of headphones quickly into a small bag. When he swings the bag over his slender frame, he sighs, then pushes out the front door, shuts it behind him. 

The ride to the airport is a strangely suspended affair, a sizzling uneasiness, a blank headspace after someone grows tired and spaces out in class. He hums to whatever music blasts from the radio (Sofia, he thinks it’s called, but he isn’t quite sure, really), taps the wheel with an index finger, uncaring, watches the traffic lights when it transitions from red to yellow to green. Twitches his hand on the gear stick idly. His eyes feel a little dry, a little lacking of moisture. He rubs at them sometimes. 

It’s nearly sunset. The day’s just been spent losing his mind over the meetup. 

The sun casts its brilliant rays of strong gold and red, scatters itself all over the car’s dashboard, on his face, glaring, but still calming. The sky is darkening, still a hue of pinkish golds, but dimming, moving to midnight blue. The sun is giving its last goodbyes as it sinks, lower, on the horizon, an unheard melody. Dark shapes move across the gold, and he knows it’s the birds flying back to their homes. 

He’s going to his home, as well. Potentially his home, he means. 

He gives a start when the roads narrow in and the buildings grow flatter, low-rise, and he knows instantly that he is nearing the airport. It sends his already teetering nerves right into malfunction, makes his pulse skitter and slide and his adrenaline to rush. 

God, they’re doing this. They’re doing this. He wavers with the sheer fact. 

He pulls into the carpark, and he sits there for a while. Shock, denial, uncertainty— he doesn’t quite know. He thumbs the wheel. The car is silent. The engine is already off. 

He heaves himself out of the car. He paws at the car’s hood, pulls out, slams the door behind him. 

Moments later, he’s at the arrival hall, and a glance up the electronic board tells him of Sapnap’s Texas to North Carolina’s flight. It says arriving. 

Terrifying.

He weaves awkwardly through the crowd of arrivals, the small talk exchanged, a few hugs of welcome, a strict business handshake between two suit-clad men. 

Messages,

  
6:33pm

Clay Dream  
_He should be arriving soon_  
_Have fun :)_

_God_

_Nervy?_

_Bit_

_You’ll be fine_

_How can I be sure_  
_How can I know for sure that I won’t mess up and scare him away or something like that_

_He’s pretty stubborn_  
_Even if you mess up it’s not like his stubbornness is gonna let him take all his stuff and leave_

_That comforts me a lot, Dream!_  
_…Not really._

_You’ll be fine_  
_Really_  
_He wants to have something between you two_  
_Like_  
_Something more_

_He talked to you?_

_We’re best friends, Karl_  
_Course we did_

_Did he really_

_Yes :)_

_Oh my god_

_Like I said, you’ll do just fine_  
_Dw bout it_  
_Relax :)_

_Can’t_  
_Body is seizing up_  
_I may be exaggerating a little_

_You’ll do great with him :)_

  
“Thanks, Dream,” he smiles, a little, coughs through his voice crack. 

He stands, in the middle of the mess of people, clutching the phone like a lifeline, headphones wrapped around his neck, and the faintest silver of _Comptine d'un autre été_ snakes into his ears from the headphones. 

The melody is slightly melancholy, slightly sad, yet it envelops him in an unspeakable feeling, a warmth pooling at the base of his gut, the forever-swirling heat at his temple. He swallows, resting a hand on the headphones, just there. 

His eyes search and dart all over the place, sweeps past the random hordes of people from different flights, flights that weren’t his. Faces that aren’t his, smiles duller than his. 

Then a new onslaught of people, another, heady exhilarated laughs from hyperactive children, a hand rubbing at scuffed curls from the flight back. A glance, snuck, at their girlfriend, a hand slung over a waist, stable and comforting.

Then there he is.

There’s a hand on the black handle of a small handcarry indigo luggage, and his eyes are darting, nervous in the crowd of people, other hand in his hoodie’s pocket, dark hair falling messily, beautiful, into his eyes. He’s biting at his bottom lip, striding out with quick steps in black-and-white adidas. 

His breath catches, falls, stutters like his hand on his phone. He nearly drops the whole fucking thing, but he straightens, tightens his grip, swallows, feels the way his throat scrapes, dry, scratchy. His free hand clenches slightly, his lips dry as his throat is. His legs feel like they’ve grown roots to the ground. 

The haunting piano notes tink in his ears, and he’s stumbling, pushing through the people with their lives in tow, moving towards his own. He’s apologising, striking a quick muttered ‘sorry’ when he bumps too hard into a flight-frazzled stranger, sliding his shoes against the airport floor hurriedly, like he’s chasing something, _someone_ ,

And he _is_. He is. He wants to, wants _him_ , just wants him so bad it physically hurts him. 

And then he pries his too-dry lips out in a semi-shout,

“Sapnap! Here!”

Then he’s running faster, and the other’s whipped his head around so quick and hard it looks like he’s got whiplash, the storm of his eyes swirling, searching, and they land square on his approaching body form, registers it within the next few milliseconds when the light brightens in his eyes and he’s opening his mouth, yelling something,

“I’m here!” 

He skids forward, and he’s closer than he ever was with Sapnap, within a foot,

“I’m here!”

And he lunges and pushes his arms under Sap’s own, winds them securely around his waist, his upper back,

“ _God_ ,” whispered hoarse and raw,

Sapnap laughs breathlessly above him, chin on his shoulder, stance unstable as a man slightly taller hunches to embrace him,

“You’re _here!_ ” gasping, enthused, flushed, cheek pressed to his neck, skin on skin contact. Dark hair tickles at the bare sliver of skin under his jaw not covered by the turtleneck, and he laughs, out of the giddiness of it all, because he’s here, he’s here, he’s here, a radiator of heat beneath his searching hands, clawing fingers,

“Oh my god, _oh my god_ ,” muttered, softer, softer, in his ear, sounding delirious, vibrations deep into his ear and lips brushing the shell of it,

“God,” he says back, shudders when Sapnap places his palms on his back, pulls him closer, like he’s trying to crawl into his skin, mould them into one so that they never separate, make them into a single entity.

It’s a lot.

“Oh my god,” he breaths into the air, eyes slipping shut, a smile laced into his quiet voice, “oh my _god_.”

“Hello, Karl Jacobs.” Sapnap laughs, slightly coarse, slightly shaky, reminiscent of their little dreams together, the greeting exchange. 

“Hey, Sapnap.” 

“This isn’t real,” Sapnap pushes his face into his neck, hot breaths fanning on his skin through the sweater. 

Karl smiles, blinks, feels the realisation coming down, down, down.

“It is.”

“Surreal,” murmured, sweet against his collarbone.

“Yeah,” Karl shifts to press him closer, feels as Sap’s muscles shift under the thin hoodie material, heat and honey and moving and alive and in front of him. “Yeah.”

“Don’t wanna move,” Sapnap mumbles after a while of staying just like that, cradled against each other’s chest, breathing lightly. 

“Carpark fees, Sap, c’mon,” he chuckles, but he’s the furthest from thinking about the sheer amount about to be deducted from his cash card.

They part, and cold ac air crowds in and pushes them apart, and he’s caught already missing Sapnap’s warmth.

Their hands stumble and falter but they shift, move a little towards the other, and the backs of their fingers brush not entirely on accident. It leaves imaginary trails of scorched fire across skin in their wake.

They’re walking to the car together, and Karl’s leaning just the slightest on the other, and his hand hovers uncertain inches from the small of Sapnap’s back, swallows, thinks better of it.

“We just met, Karl,” Sap laughs, tries to push him away, fails.

“So?” he pouts playfully, pokes Sapnap back, “I can still want to hug you, alright.”

They lug Sapnap’s luggage to the car boot, heaves it over and up, and the luggage responds with a answering muted thud that shakes the car just slightly.

When they get into the car, Karl’s hands find the wheel and the other on the ignition key, fingering it, and his body feels like it’s stiff when Sapnap comes in and closes the door, and there’s suspended silence. There’re things they both want to say, but things that they’re not ready to say yet.

“Uh,” Sapnap says, awkward, and Karl blinks rapidly, twists the ignition key. 

“Sorry, spaced out a bit.”

“’S fine.”

\--

“Where do you wanna go?” Sapnap lets the half-hour of radio music fill the semi-comfortable silence between them both before he interrupts it. The corner of his vision gives him just the right view of Sap’s slanted body, pushed against the shotgun seat’s door, cheek resting on his palm as he looks ahead. His hair is unruly as usual.

“Go?” he repeats, not daring to take his eyes off the road in case he’s met with grey.

“Jackass, I’m not gonna go to your house and stay there for two weeks and do nothing, you know. I want— adventure! I want adventure, yeah, mmm, exploration.” Sapnap grins easily, and he thinks his eyes flicker towards him.

“After we put down your baggage, Sappy,” Karl chuckles, eyes on the last remnants of the sun’s dying rays. 

“No,” Sapnap pouts, pulls his face out, and he looks unbearably endearing. “I wanna go. Like now. No stopping for the bags, pretty boy.” 

_Pretty boy_. He’s sure he’s flushed from neck up, and he hurriedly turns away so that the blush is less noticeable, but he doesn’t really think it’ll make much of a difference. 

“You’re very hyperactive, aren’t you.” Karl smiles through the burn in his cheeks, the heat infused at the one spot in his collarbone. 

“Like you aren’t, Karl Jacobs.”

“I’m not the little whining bitch in the shotgun seat because he doesn’t get his way,” Karl scoffs, laughs when Sapnap huffs a ‘hey!’, flops back on the seat. 

“’M not like George, Karl, stop implying that I am,” Sapnap mumbles, mock offended.

“Ooo, telling.”

“Tell the colourblind bitch then, he’s literally dog water.”

“Any askers?”

When Sapnap replies to their little internal joke with the boys (broadcasted to the fanbase, sure, but still private regardless), it’s with a small smile, a fluttering of his dark eyelashes, a tilt of a wrist.

“None at all.”

\--

“What am I gonna wear, Sap, I literally didn’t bring anything with me, I thought I was gonna go back home first—”

“It’s quick, Karl, promise, just take me ‘round for a day and a night and we can go live at your house.”

“You just get everything because you’re pretty.”

“Except some bitches, you know.”

“I’m your bitch.”

“Whoa, what?”

\--

The luggage rumbles in the car boot as they drive, Karl’s hand wrapped the wheel, and the windows are rolled down. Sapnap whoops when he sticks his head out the window, doesn’t listen when Karl berates his recklessness and threatens to roll the window back up on his head, giggles at Karl and sticks out a tongue as his dark hair flies, untamed, frivolous, across his face. Karl rolls his eyes and laughs back, pushes his head back into the headrest, eyelashes down, still watching the road, the way darkness falls, and the traffic lights cast its beams of red-yellow-green onto the road ahead. He watches the way Sapnap yells down the largely empty roads and hoots in unbridled enthusiasm, the shape of his hands gripping the side on the door. His hoodie ripples with folds on his back when he moves. 

It’s quiet only except Sap’s voice heightened out for the world, and it’s bliss. 

“Don’t you ever get tired, Sapnap?” Karl asks.

“Yeah, just not right now,” Sapnap tilts back, turns slightly to his right so that all he can see is the curve of his cheekbone and dark fluttering eyelashes. “Slept in the plane ride; not gonna sleep soon.”

His voice is quieter now, relenting, when he tries to turn more so that his slight smile is visible. 

“You want to go exploring for the entire night?” Karl asks.

“That was what I wanted, but, y’know, I thought you maybe needed to sleep on the car or something,” he cocks his head. 

“It’s fine,” Karl blinks, grins, “my sleep schedule is honked up as it is, I don’t mind,”

“I do, though, dude,” Sapnap sticks a hand out, “you need your beauty sleep to look pretty.”

Karl laughs, flustered, and he thinks he gets flushed way too much way too easily in the other’s ethereal presence. “Okay, Sappy. Don’t go babying me.”

“’M not,” Sapnap says thoughtfully, like the car’s filled with his thoughts. “Just thought you’d want to sleep, you know.”

“Not really,” Karl tries, but then an ill-timed yawn wrenches its way out of his mouth, and he slaps his hand over his mouth guiltily.

The younger’s smug. “Told you so.”

“Don’t go getting a big head over something like this.”

“I already have one, nimrod, I’m just expanding it.” 

Sapnap asks him where they’ll sleep, since they’ve already established that they’re not about to reach Karl’s home. 

“In the car, duh,” Karl drawls tiredly, draws his gaze up.

“Okay, but are you sure it’s gonna be comfortable?” 

“No. _Maybe_ we could’ve thought about that before we went on an impulsive field trip.” Karl drags, sarcastic. 

“Look, it isn’t my fault,” Sapnap whines, “why don’t you have backup blankets in the boot?”

“No one has that?”

“Everyone has at least one, in my experience, Jacobs.”

Karl shrugs. Taps the wheel as the road evens out onto a highway, and he doesn’t have to pay attention to any traffic lights anymore. 

“I’m experienced. I can sleep anywhere uncomfortable just fine.”

“Sure.” Sapnap replies for the sake of it.

They stop the car around an hour or so after midnight, to the side of the highway, and it may be slightly illegal, but no one’s there to see it anyway. 

“You tired now?” Sapnap blinks, grey eyes flashing in the limited light of the dashboard screen and the blinking numbers of 1:24am. 

“I woke up early today,” Karl yawns, stretches to the best of his ability in the confines of the car. 

The highway is above trees and greenery too dark to discern the colour of, and stars already spill themselves overhead, blinks curiously at these two idiots stopped to rest alone on a highway. There’s no sound, the radio shut off hours ago when his headache had gotten worse, instead opting to listen to Sapnap’s mindless ramble about some anime called Haikyuu. He knows close to nothing about it, but Sap’s voice is dripping warmth, swirling hot chocolate, and he’s said time and time again that his voice is his favourite thing in the world. It’d soothed his incessant headache. 

There’s movement when Karl squirms through the gap between his seat and Sapnap’s, and plops himself with some difficulty onto the backseat. Sapnap groans at that, complains, “what the fuck, Jacobs, I can’t fit through that,” pushes his way out of the car and pulls the back door open, squeezes through to sit beside him. 

“I’m just flexible,” Karl grins, mocks. Sapnap snorts, unamused. 

It’s dark. They sit, pressed against each other, and Karl feels Sapnap shuffle closer in the dark, see his outline as he moves closer, presses his thigh against his own, and it’s hard to discern anything in the blackness. His skin is warm against his, like a heater. The cold air from outside and the remnants of cool aircon air contrasts the trailing touch of the back of Sapnap’s hand on the back on his. 

“You gonna sleep like this?” Sapnap’s voice comes, and Karl sighs. 

“Yeah, well.” 

Karl slides a little so that he’s leaning on Sap’s shoulder, makes the angle of his shoulder comfortable and snuggles his face into the curve of the spot between his shoulder and his neck, fists his hoodie loosely, feels his heaving breathes in his chest as it rises and falls under the material. His eyes fall shut, and it’s darker. Sapnap doesn’t say anything when he breathes against his collarbone. 

There’s an unspoken goodnight uttered into the frozen air when Karl falls to the twirling embrace of sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not going to pretend that ill update regularly now  
> sorry for the vv long wait omg it's been three weeks; here's a x2 longer chapter for your troubles. im like only satisfied with the part at the airport lol but content is content
> 
> i rt stuff and tweet abt karlnap/dsmp!karlnapity/georgenap on my twitter [@mistionii](https://twitter.com/mistionii)


End file.
